What if we took what some would consider mediocre ingredients and tried to make great beer from them?  Let’s see:

The Recipe

Name: Muntons Connoisseurs Export Pilsner
Batch size: 4.75 gallons
Expected OG: 1.050
Expected IBU: ??
Mash: none

   1 can Muntons Connoisseurs Export Pilsner hopped extract kit
 1.0 lb  Brewers Crystals
 1.0 lb  Turbinado sugar
         Yeast nutrient

2 packs Wyeast 2000 Budvar Lager

Notes

This isn’t a total slum-brew since we’re not just using 2 lbs of table sugar.  Instead, we had some Brewers Crystals lying around which we decided to use.  These look like corn sugar (dextrose) and are in fact made from corn, but mimic the fermentability profile of regular barley wort by containing mostly maltose and some unfermentable sugars.  They boost alcohol without losing body.

We’re also using Turbinado sugar because why not; maybe they’ll add some interesting flavors to an otherwise lower-gravity kit.  It might turn out that the flavor doesn’t quite work in what’s supposed to be a pretty clean beer, but we’re hopeful.

We hit 1.052 original gravity and lazy-chilled to 53°F before pitching 2 packs of Wyeast Budvar Lager.  We did not aerate, though we probably should have.  10 days after pitching we raised the temperature to 63°F for a diacetyl rest and to help the yeast finish the ferment.  11 days after pitching the gravity had dropped to 1.018, and 16 days after pitching it was still dropping at 1.016.  We haven’t checked it again yet but we’d like to end somewhere around 1.013.  Whenever it’s done, we’ll cold-crash for a few days then rack over to a serving keg for the lagering process.

3/26/2017 Update

It finished at 1.014 and tasted like Chardonnay during kegging.  We’re not sure if that’s due to lager yeast not liking Turbinado sugar or what.  It cleaned up in the keg, but it still has a wine-like taste when it gets warm.  But serve it chilled at 35 degrees and it’s kinda like Grain Belt: kinda-not-really hoppy, with a slightly sweet finish. It’s actually not bad for what it is, but we were hoping for a cleaner beer.

Next time: maybe use Pils malt extract or dextrose instead of Brewer’s Crystals and Turbinado.

We’ve had a can of Mountmellick Stout kicking around for a while.  We also had small amounts of specialty malts in the grain cellar that needed using up, which are perfect for a mini-mash to go with the can.

Mountmellick is pre-hopped so we didn’t need additional bittering hops, but we had some left-over UK Fuggles to use for aroma.  This should give the beer a bit more hop character above the malt extract’s bitterness.

The Recipe

Name: Mountmellick+
Batch size: 3 gallons
Expected OG: 1.068 (75% efficiency)
Expected FG: 1.017
Expected IBU: ?
Partial Mash: 30m @ 153°F

  4   lbs Mountmellick Stout pre-hopped extract
  1.5 lbs Pale 2-row
  7.0 oz  UK Brown
  4.0 oz  UK Pale Chocolate (200L)
  4.0 oz  Belgian Special B
  4.0 oz  Briess C80L
  3.0 oz  UK Chocolate (425L)
  2.0 oz  Briess C120L
  2.0 oz  Briess C150L

  0.5 oz  UK Fuggle 5.3% AA @ 20m
  0.5 oz  UK Fuggle 5.3% AA @ 5m
  1 pack Mountmellick yeast
1/2 pack Safale S05 dry yeast

The Brew

We crushed the partial mash grains and heated our strike water to 160°F.  Mash-in dropped the temperature to 152°F and we turned the stove on to raise temperature slightly.  Once we got there, we turned off the burner and left the mash alone.  Unfortunately the temperature at the top of the kettle wasn’t the temperature at the bottom,and when everything finally stabilized the entire mash was sitting at 163°F for about an hour.  While unexpected, it won’t ruin the beer, since most of the sugar in the wort came from the Mountmellick can instead of our partial mash.

We removed our grain bag, sparged with more filtered water, and added that back to the main kettle.  When the wort began to boil we moved part of it to a smaller pot and added the can of Mountmellick extract to that, mixing well to ensure nothing would scorch on the bottom.  We added the small pot back to the kettle and proceeded with a 30 minute boil, starting at 17.5° Plato (1.072).

The astute among you will notice we’re already over our target gravity of 1.068, and after boiling the gravity would only be higher.  It appears we completely mis-judged our efficiency and got closer to 90% of the potential extract from our the partial mash.

Since we weren’t trying to make an Imperial Stout we topped up with 1 gallon of cold filtered water to result in about 4 gallons of 15° Plato wort (1.061) before adding the yeast and fermenting at 68°F for about 10 days.  When racking to the keg after fermentation was complete, the final gravity was 1.024 for about 4.9% ABV.

The Beer

The result was a thick, black, roasty stout with significant bitterness and a dense rocky head that stuck around.  Pretty good for an extract beer and a screwed-up partial mash.  The bitterness was higher than we expected, but that’s probably because the pre-hopped malt extract can is meant for a 5 gallon batch and we were using it for 3.

What would we do differently next time, if another can of Mountmellick happened to drop from the sky?  First, we’d move all our hop additions to 5 minutes or less, and use a hopstand to achieve more flavor and aroma.  We’d also more tightly control the partial mash temperature to keep the beer lighter in body.  But we’d also not bother doing a partial mash, since the gravity contribution of the pale malt is likely too high and would have significantly increased the alchohol had it been successful.

This year on our annual trip to Brno in the Czech Republic, we were impressed by the rising beer scene for two reasons.  First, we noticed more new micro-breweries on tap in pubs, and second a lot of the micro brews aren’t Czech pilsners.

For example, Pivovar Lucky Bastard was mere blocks from our hotel, and while we couldn’t get away from meetings to visit the brewery during its small, small bottle sales window (11 – 4 on Tuesday), we did sample their Dubbel at Ochutnávková pivnice.  We also had a stout from Pivovar Kocour Varnsdorf, an American IPA from Pivovar Nomád, a DIPA from Pivovar Slavkovsky, and an English IPA from Beskydsky Pivovárek.  And as always, classic Czech Pilsner of all varieties.

Next year we hope to see even more variety, and even more pubs serving even more kinds of beer.  It can only get better, right?

If you don’t, this could be your next beer.  And no, you can’t put it back into the keg and hope for the best, because you have no idea what kind of junk the previous owner of your keezer stored in there.  It just won’t taste right.  How do we know?  Don’t ask.  So when you have a nice full keg of delicious beer, make sure you use a wrench and don’t just finger-tighten the MFL fittings onto your disconnects.

Thankfully we got to drink a few pints of the Use-it-up Stout and it was great.  So great, in fact, that we brewed it again this week and hit most of the numbers spot on.  But it’s likely nothing will ever measure up to our recollection of how great our taste of the first batch was, right before it escaped into the freezer.

You have been warned.

We brewed this IPA the first time back in November and we didn’t Brew It Right™.  Time to fix that.

Last Time

November’s grain bill was too sweet and wasn’t balanced by the hops.  When racking to secondary and tasting the hydrometer sample, we said:

Wow, what an awful taste.  First off, too sweet, and the aroma hops (mostly Cluster) just don’t work with the sweetness of the malt.  Maybe it will get better with time, but we certainly know what we won’t do in the future: pair a large amount of Golden Promise with late-addition Cluster.

The beer got better with age, but was never particularly good.  This time, we’re making some changes:

1. Maris Otter instead Golden Promise – GP is a sweeter malt, but we’d like complexity without the sweetness, thus the MO.  We’re sure GP is appropriate in some beers, just not in this one.
2. No Cluster – not clean enough of a finishing hop, at least in the large quantities used in IPAs.  While we know of some very popular lighter beers that use late-addition Cluster, it’s just not right for this IPA.  This time we’ll go with more traditional finishing hops.
3. Add some wheat malt – makes the beer a little lighter and gives better head.  Plus we’ve got some we need to use.

The Brew

This time we decided to try batch sparging in an attempt to save time during the brew day.  We usually fly-sparge on our system, and that takes anywhere from 60 to 90 minutes, so we were looking to speed things up and make the brew day a bit shorter.

In a typical batch sparge, you drain the entire mash tun for the first batch.  Then you add more hot water, let it sit for about 15 or 20 minutes, and drain again for the second batch.  The combination of first and second batches makes your final boil volume.

Our first batch clocked in at 5.25 gallons and 13.75 Plato.  The second batch was 3.25 gallons at 6.5 Plato.  With these batches combined, we began the boil with 8.5 gallons at 11 Plato (1.042 SG).  This was right on the target of a final 5.5 gallons at 1.066 SG, but since our boil-off rate is about 2 gallons per hour, we needed to boil off a gallon of wort.

30 minutes later we added the first bittering hops and an hour after that, our boil was done.  5 gallons went into the fermenter at 1.066 SG, yielding about 70% efficiency.

Did Batch Sparging save time?

No, it did not.  Two things prevented batch sparging from saving time over fly-sparging:

1. more wort, lower gravity: fly sparging seems to result in a more concentrated wort, which means we can start the boil right away.  Batch sparging seems to yield more wort at a lower gravity, which means we have to spend 30 – 40 minutes boiling off water before we can start adding hops.
2. rest between batches: batch sparging guides usually say to wait between batches and let the water leach more sugars out of the grain.  That takes an additional 20 minutes.

So besides the time spent draining the mash tun (15 minutes) you add another hour for resting and boil-off, and batch sparging doesn’t save us any time.  But it was a bit easier, and we didn’t have to monitor the gravity near the end of the sparge to avoid tannin extraction.

Into the Secondary

We’re somewhat slow writing up each brew, so this IPA is already being dry-hopped in secondary.  You see, we’ve got a friendly competition coming up where this IPA will be pitted against 15 commercial hoppy beers, so we’re under the gun.  Final gravity into secondary was 1.016 SG for an ABV of 6.5%, which was right on target.  We’d planned to dry-hop with Willamette and Ahtanum, but after trying valiantly to drink an Ahtanum dry-hopped Kolsch at a local brewery, we sprinted away from this combination.  Luckily our freezer had a half-ounce each of Simcoe and Amarillo, both excellent IPA dry-hops.

When it’s done, we’ll do a proper tasting and give you all the details.

All gone 🙁

Incremental improvements?  I would make none; this was a good solid bitter, and only got better with time.  I’ve become more interested in British milds and bitters recently, so expect to see more of them here.